Portals for home loan applications? Be careful what you wish for

In a further submission to the Commerce Commission's market study of competition in personal banking services, Finance and Mortgage Advisers Association of New Zealand (FAMNZ) country manager Leigh Hodgetts for all lenders to agree on a common online loan application portal, as is done in Australia.

Hodgetts said having to email loan applications in NZ “is very inefficient” and can result in clients missing out on buying opportunities.

But Wellington-based adviser Andrew Perry says in his submission published this week following last months' conference hosted by ComCom that has been tried and failed in NZ.

“We have seen portals operated in market in NZ in various forms since I started working as a broker in 2016 – two major banks and one large non-bank lender in NZ all offered these portals in the past, but no longer do so due to the additional labour it imposed on those submitting applications,” Perry says.